FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW

Review of Soul (Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross/Jon Batiste)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you specifically appreciated Jon Batiste's jazz compositions in context, much of the hype surrounding this soundtrack based on his contribution to the New York City scenes in the film.

Avoid it... if you expect the underscore by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to have a soul, their music enhancing very little in the picture and leaving practically no lasting impression.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Soul: (Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross/Jon Batiste) Between 2017's Coco and 2020's Soul, Pixar has explored some daunting and extraordinarily original stories about the afterlife, the latter film once again successfully balancing the drama, comedy, and fantasy realms for a touching tale. These films teach viewers to live life to the fullest while cautioning about what comes next, and the lead character of Soul, Joe, learns that lesson after falling into a manhole and nearly losing his life. The high school music teacher dreams of being a jazz musician in a club, and while on the cusp of achieving that opportunity, his accident thrusts his soul into the "Great Beyond," where he rebels and accidentally ends up in the "Great Before," where souls are prepared for their life on Earth. Joe and a temperamental soul, "22," team up to each overcome their misconceptions and ultimately enjoy fruitful lives back on Earth. The style of animation in Soul's otherworldly locales is bizarre, and Pixar enthusiasts will miss John Ratzenberger in a studio entry for the first time, but the film was met with almost universal praise. Its embrace came on Disney's streaming platform, the theatrical release mostly scrubbed due to the 2020 pandemic. The music for Soul is highly compartmentalized by design, the tone of the living New York City scenes and that of the afterlife (and beforelife) completely disparate and lacking mingling except in one cue. Sound designers turned film score fad duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were recommended for the project by a veteran Pixar sound designer, and one might have expected them to take the same approach to this project as their marginally successful Mank just previously. For that film, they combined a minimalistic score with original vintage jazz recordings produced with a significant amount of help from arrangers and orchestrators. For Soul, however, their contributions were limited to only the otherworldly sequences in the film, with the filmmakers instead approaching famed bandleader Jon Batiste, known during these years for leading the music for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," for the rest. Batiste and his collaborators from his group, Stay Human, among others, provide the jazzy pieces that serve as the score for the "living" portions of the story.

While one might expect the two distinct styles of music in Soul to carry over between realms, they don't. It's an odd and disappointing tactical choice by the filmmakers. Joe is, after all, the same person with the same ambitions and passions in both worlds, so if his soul is the primary focus of the story, then why does the music have to shift so drastically based solely on locale? The absolute disconnect between the Reznor/Ross material and Batiste's contributions is jarring to the extent that it harms the narrative and personality of the film. It doesn't help that neither half of the score functions particularly well in and of itself as film music, Batiste providing music with no clearly evident, cohesive structural development from start to finish, and Reznor and Ross retreating into their familiar sound design habits that also fail to really drive a musical narrative from start to finish. There are individual moments in each half of the score that are functional and quite enjoyable, but their sums don't sustain themselves apart. There has been a fair amount of controversy over whether Batiste's portions can even be considered part of the "score," as they do serve primarily as source music that bleeds into surrounding scenes. This debate largely centers around awards eligibility that has been focused on Reznor and Ross. In all reality, Batiste's music probably should not be considered "score" material, as it is comprised of a series of contemporary jazz compositions that don't together form any kind of thematic bond or other typical film score traits. In Mank, the main jazz piece is reprised in a series of different emotional modes throughout, eventually merging with the underscore in totality. Here, Batiste seems to write self-contained pieces of basic emotional needs for a scene, and some of them are very good. But they remind of the vintage James Horner works in which the big band jazz was completely separate from the remainder of the score. Meanwhile, Reznor and Ross don't offer a hint of jazz anywhere in their recordings, a totally inexcusable decision made worse by the fact that they assumed the afterlife was yet another setting appropriate for the comfort zone of their droning synthesizers. Their contributions have no organic element to them whatsoever, falling into the trap of believing that an otherworldly environment needs unconventional music when, in fact, it needed a warmer, orchestral touch to better emphasize the importance of relationships and personal discovery rather than simply the sights and sounds of a different place.

In retrospect, the score portion of Soul outside of the jazz pieces should have been written by Thomas Newman, and it seems like Reznor and Ross may at times have been trying to emulate his style. An argument could be made that Newman's score for Tolkien would have fit better in Soul than the underwhelming and often cold music by Reznor and Ross that strives for the same ethereal quality. The very basic emotional character of the score's cues is addressed, but the composers fail to offer any compelling aspects of their motifs or performances to have an impact on the film. They present minor identities for two secondary characters, but Joe himself is lost in this music. As such, in context, Reznor and Ross' music is badly unengaging and at times distracting. The dated synth analog sound of 1980's arcade games has no place in the first half of this work. Nor do the tired manipulation effects, including sudden drop-offs and grating dissonance from distortion. The vaguely happier, wishy-washy cues at the end, culminating in the pretty keyboarding of "Just Us," is too insubstantial to affect scenes for the better. The "Earthbound" cue, despite its pleasant meanderings, is totally insufficient for the emotional catharsis of the scene. The composers do offer a theme for 22, one of the characters in that scene, but it doesn't figure in that cue. Its meandering ascending and descending keyboard lines can instead be heard at 0:10 into "22 is Ready," 1:17 into "Betrayal," 0:14 into "Escape" (accelerated for action), and 0:20 into "Flashback." The only other character with a theme is the soul accountant, whose awkwardly imposing idea occupies all of "Terry Time" and "Terry Time Too" and the end of "Terry's World." If Joe does have a theme, it may be the "Just Us" conclusion, but that alone is not enough. The score enhances very little in the picture and leaves no impression. It is simply generic, oddly dated and styled atmosphere for a tale that needed to break your heart and teach you to live life to the fullest. The lack of mingling for the score and jazz pieces is fatal as well, "Pursuit/Terry's World" the only mix of both. On album, the disjointed listening experience is compounded, especially with a handful of songs thrown in. Some of the score cues are mixed into each other on album, where the digital product suffers the most from the score and Batiste materials' presentation. At some point in the conceptual stages, the merging of Reznor, Ross, and Batiste for Soul must have looked great on paper. The end result is one of the least effective, poorly coordinated soundtracks to a Pixar film in the studio's history.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 64:15

• 1. Born to Play* (2:00) • 2. Born to Play Reprise* (0:50) • 3. Bigger Than Us* (1:51) • 4. Collard Greens and Cornbread Strut* (0:36) • 5. The Great Beyond** (2:45) • 6. Falling** (0:41) • 7. The Great Before/U Seminar** (3:19) • 8. Jump to Earth** (0:52) • 9. Rappin Ced - performed by Daveed Diggs (0:37) • 10. Joe's Lowdown Blues* (0:36) • 11. Terry Time** (1:14) • 12. Joe's Life** (0:40) • 13. Portal/The Hall of Everything** (2:18) • 14. Run/Astral Plane** (1:44) • 15. Lost Soul** (0:29) • 16. Meditation/Return to Earth** (1:40) • 17. 22's Getaway* (0:58) • 18. Apex Wedge* (0:49) • 19. Let Your Soul Glow* (0:20) • 20. Terry Time Too** (3:00) • 21. Feel Soul Good* (0:27)

• 22. Parting Ways - performed by Cody Chesnutt (2:20) • 23. Looking at Life* (1:31) • 24. Fruit of the Vine* (0:43) • 25. 22 is Ready** (1:25) • 26. Pursuit/Terry's World** (1:42) • 27. Betrayal** (2:28) • 28. Space Maker - performed by Jon Batiste (1:17) • 29. Cristo Redentor - performed by Jon Batiste (2:21) • 30. The Epic Conversationalist/Born to Play* (1:26) • 31. Celestial Spaces in Blue* (0:52) • 32. Spiritual Connection* (1:13) • 33. Lost** (1:09) • 34. Epiphany** (3:48) • 35. Ship Chase** (1:40) • 36. Escape/Inside 22** (2:32) • 37. Flashback** (1:33) • 38. Earthbound** (1:27) • 39. Thank You** (0:42) • 40. Enjoy Every Minute** (0:48) • 41. It's All Right - performed by Jon Batiste and Celeste (2:50) • 42. Just Us** (2:42)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for the digital version of this album.

Copyright © 2021-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Soul are Copyright © 2020, Walt Disney Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/1/21 (and not updated significantly since).